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"I'm not sure," he said. "Some men came to the house, scared my mom pretty bad."
My selfish thoughts disappeared as worry replaced the want inside me. "Go," I told him, realizing I was holding him up. "I'll be fine."
He took another long moment to look down into my face, and then he leaned in and kissed me softly. "I'll be back," he said, and it felt like a promise that we'd continue what we'd started. I hoped so. I was in much too deep to just walk away. I wanted him. I wanted to know him. I wanted to continue feeling like he saw something in me that no one else had ever taken the time to see, something real.
Jace let me go and a moment later I heard the door in the kitchen. I looked around Jace's room, and then sighed, collecting my things and heading to my own cold empty room at the end of the hall. The timing was off, as always. Jace was my bodyguard, and I'd just made a deal with Ryan to pretend to be my boyfriend. A man like Jace deserved better than the complicated mess I could offer him.
I spent a long night in my room, not sleeping, just listening to Elvis snore and thinking about what a tangled disaster I'd made of everything. Maybe going home would be good. Seeing my sister and Gran might help me put things in perspective.
Maybe I should forget the way I felt about Jace, let him do his job and stop putting myself first.
* * *
In the softdiffuse light of morning, I felt worse than I had the night before. Jace hadn't returned, and Chad was in my kitchen when I finally dragged myself down for coffee.
"Morning, Ms. Manchester," he said, peering at me over the tabloid he was reading.
"Hi Chad," I said, trying not to sound hostile. I wasn't fond of the blond bodyguard. But then again, he wasn't Jace, so it was inevitable he'd fall down in the comparison. Chad just gave off a creepy vibe. "Jace isn't back?"
"Not yet," he said. "He called an hour ago, asked me to take his place today."
My heart dropped in my chest. Was his mother hurt? I wondered if I should call him, see if I could help. "So he'll be gone all day?"
Chad raised an eyebrow over the magazine, cocked his mouth into a half grin. "You sound pretty disappointed," he observed. "Anything I should know about what goes on in here when I'm sleeping outside?"
Yep. It wasn't the comparison, I just didn't like Chad. "Are you supposed to speak to clients that way?" I asked him, adopting an offended tone and crossing my arms.
The grin dimmed a bit and he shook his head slowly, as if he'd already answered his own question, and was judging me. “Of course not. Sorry.”
"Chad?" I said. "I think I'm fine in here today. You can just be outside, okay? I'll call you if I need you."
The grin fell completely, and Chad dropped the magazine to the table. "Supposed to have one guy in the house," he said.
"Not today," I told him, my tone still icy. "I want to be alone."
"Uh, okay," he said. "I'll let the guys know. We'll get an extra guy on the doors then."
"That's fine." I watched while he stood and lumbered back out the side door, relief washing through me when he was gone.
The day crawledby as I tried to look at the pile of scripts my agent had messengered over, but my mind was at war with my heart and it made it hard to focus.
There were a million reasons why I shouldn't feel the way I did for Jace, not the least of which was to protect him. He didn't need to be dragged into my messy life, with vengeful exes and fake relationships, the press watching my every move. There was little chance we could keep any real relationship a secret, and Jace would surely lose his job if we were found out, since the firm he worked for made it clear that fraternization compromised security and had each of us sign an agreement.
There was also the little matter of Ryan, who was supposed to be my boyfriend now. If the press fell for the Ryan scenario, and it turned out I was dating Jace, there'd be another scandal, and would feed right into the story Zac was trying to sell—that I'd been unfaithful to him first. That I was just a whore, an easy slut.
It wouldn't be fair to anyone to continue letting my heart push me at Jace. I needed to cut that off before anything really happened. Anything else.
I wasin the den watching television with a glass of wine when the security radio blared with Chad’s voice.
“Miss Manchester? Jace is on his way in. Just didn't want you to be alarmed.”
I picked up the radio, feeling slightly guilty about judging Chad earlier. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. “Thanks,” I said, pushing the button on the side to talk.
I went to the kitchen, where I knew Jace would come in, and my heart lightened when Jace's familiar smile greeted me through the glass. But then I remembered what I'd decided today, and I pushed my heart back into place.
"Hey," I said, opening the door. "Did you lose your key?"
He looked tired and it took everything I had not to put my arms around him. "No, I just didn't want to scare you. Figured I'd announce my entrance. Chad said you've been alone in the house all day, so having someone suddenly appear might freak you out."
